A farewell to nuclear submarines, for now
The Defence White Paper signals full-steam ahead for Australia’s most expensive defence project ever: the design and construction, in Australia, of 12 conventionally-powered submarines. With A$200m...
View ArticleAustralia’s new Cyber Centre and Australia Ltd
When Mr Obama sat down with China’s President Xi Jinping in California this week, it’s a fair bet that the prickliest subject was cyber. American companies being are being ripped off by almost...
View ArticleThe ship that dare not speak its name
Aircraft carriers have a habit of denying what they really are. In the 1970s, Britain’s new Invincible class carriers were officially christened ‘Through Deck Cruisers’, to reassure the nation’s...
View ArticleThe British are coming (back)
It’s been 40 years since a UK defence review meant much to Australia and the Asia–Pacific, but the National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015, released last month,...
View ArticleChina: courting disaster in South China Sea
Peter Jennings is right to point out that siting surface-to-air missiles (SAM) on Woody Island in the Paracel Islands is a strategic game-changer for the South China Sea. It’s also the logical...
View ArticleBrexit: crying wolf isn’t working
Over the past fortnight, the dawning realisation that Brexit could actually happen has sent the British establishment groping for the campaign panic button. Until now, the Remain side has sat...
View ArticleDenial and deficits set the terms for Brexit divorce
After Britain’s shock Auf Wiedersehen last Friday, politicians in the UK and Europe are now struggling to figure out what a Brexit divorce will look like. One way to do this is to look at ...
View ArticleThe Three Brexiteers
Any hopes that the swiftly-engineered coronation of Theresa May meant the Brits were going soft on Brexit have been squashed by the instant elevation of a trio of hardened eurosceptics—Boris Johnson,...
View ArticleUK Type 26 frigate: a cruiser by any other name?
Are modern-day frigates really cruisers, or is it just that the present-day needs of a frigate require the 6,000-plus tonnage of an old-fashioned cruiser? Alastair Cooper exchanged a polite broadside...
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